One Week Now!

So I haven't been here exactly a week, but almost.  I wish I had a camera here, because I'd love to post pictures of all the cool people and things I've done so far, but I don't exactly have one, so I'm sort of relying on Google Images and other photos people have taken and put on Facebook (which I almost just spelled Phacebook) here.

ANYWAY.  It's actually been kind of crazy, I've been pretty much running at full speed since I got here.  My mom was here for the weekend, it was REALLY nice to see her.  I only got home for about one second this summer, which happened to be the particular second that my mom was working overtime trying to get school closed, so we didn't see a whole lot of each other.  I didn't see as much of her as I might have liked, being that school was just starting and all the orientation BS was happening, but we did get to hang out a couple of days, and we had some good dinners together.  Plus, both of my parents spent a lot of time in Washington D.C. as young adults, so it was cool to have her show me some of the things that they talk about as being very central to their lives before children.  Kind of wish the whole fam bam could have come out, but my father is saying he'll be out here some time in late September, and my brother...well if I ever heard from him, that would be great.

(this is from a few years ago. you can tilt your head)

So Day 1, they have all the Washington Semester students meet in the National Presbyterian Church chapel, which is apparently just down the street.  That looked like this:

Then the Dean of the program talked for about two centuries.  It's his last year working here, so I guess he decided to impart every last bit of knowledge and every anecdote he'd saved up over the last 30 some years and share it with us.  But it was cool to see how many kids are in the program, and hear about all the cool things people have done over the years. 

By the time he finished, I didn't have enough time to grab lunch, so I went with Andrew to 7/11 and got a cheeseburger hot dog, which was actually too awful to show an image of.  After that though, we went to the first meeting of my American Politics seminar, which is effectively the only class I'm taking this semester.  The way it works is that the class meets 3 days a week for roughly 3 hours every day, they bring in new Washington-savvy speakers every day or so, and sometimes we get lecture provided by the professor.  That class accounts for 2 course credits.  With that, we take a research course, in which we essentially do our own research on a Washington-based topic with guidance from the professor, and an internship course, where we do an internship and submit field notes and such to prove that we're learning something. 

The professor is this guy named Richard Semiatin, he's been there for ages and ages.  He's really intriguing, very quirky, moves like he's not quite in control of his body, but seems very knowledgeable.  Today, I hiccuped in class, and without skipping a beat he goes, "Drunk agaaaiiinn. I warned you about hitting the bottle before class."  Laughter ensued. 

So since then, I've gotten to do a bit of exploring around the city and such.  The area around the Tenleytown stop, which is where I live, is a bit like Davis Square, except a little less gay and without the 20 minute walk to get there.  When my Mom was in town, we hung around the Mall mostly, saw some of the gardens and the American History Museum, and had an awesome dinner at this place called Oyamel near the Convention Center, courtesy of restaurant week.  Also, we spent a fair amount of time around the Farragut North stop, where a lot of the advocacy groups are stationed (and got a sick tour of the NCLR building, which is where my Mom used to work).  

As for other types of exploring, I might as well mentioned the Amazing Race scavenger hunt across D.C. that our team won.  OWNED, I might say.  It was ridiculous.  Talk about on point, we managed to beat 15 other teams to win a $10 Metro card, a bookbag that says "Washington Semester Program" on it, and access to a sexy black-tie event at the Costa Rican embassy.  Not too bad. 

Also, it was fun, and I made some friends. 

So mostly that's what I've been up to.  I've watched some Veronica Mars, applied for a few jobs, vidchatted with Nina, and slept.  This bed is like in the middle of the bed, much preferable to the desk, and so I tend to fall asleep a lot (and fairly early).  I think I might be getting sick.